Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

My character as a Mr. Norton from Birmingham, a broker who was staying with tile Santelles while arranging certain investments for Uncle Cato, conferred a sort of half guest, half agent status upon me, and nobody thought, it worth while either to snub me or take me up in their arms, so to speak. That left me valued freedom. I was certain that only Tommy, among the guests, knew my identity, and he only by chance.

After dinner the party separated, pairing off to suit themselves, some to play cards and others to stroll in the moonlight. I found myself cornered by Uncle Cato, who made slight but understandable signals to me.

“What’s up?” I asked when he came to me in the library.

“Cletus is worried,” the old man informed me, his own face none too happy. “The head gardener found tracks in a clump of lilac under my nephew’s bedroom window this afternoon. Large tracks, and there is every indication that the person making them stood there for a considerable time. The fact that they are in the midst of the clump where nobody but one desiring to be hidden would stand causes considerable speculation. Will you have a look?”

I nodded. “Send the head gardener to me back of the house,” I requested, and strolled leisurely outside. A wait of five minutes brought the gardener, and we repaired to the lilac bush.

“I was raking leaves from among the stalks, sir,” he explained, “and saw the tracks. They seemed fresh, and I am sure they were not there yesterday. So I reported the circumstance, sir.”

“Quite right, Benson,” I said, thinking that this bird must have attended grammar school for a considerable spell before he specialized in agriculture. “Now go up the back stairs, find Mr. Cletus’s valet and have him light the bedroom. Tell him to walk about in the room, stand before the dressing table, sit down under the reading lamp, and otherwise show himself. Do that at once.”

The gardener was off, and I parted the foliage and stepped into the middle of the lilac bush, where my flash disclosed the tracks mentioned. A man had evidently stood there for some time, as the tracks were deep, signifying that he had remained motionless long enough for his weight to cause quite a depression. He had come into the bush from the side away from the house, as lighter impressions showed. Outside, on the grass, the tracks did not show.

Presently the lights in Flash’s room came on, and placing myself in the sulker’s tracks I surveyed the windows. From where I stood the figure of the valet could be plainly seen as he moved about in the room. When he sat down in the chair under the reading lamp, as directed, I could see only the top of his head.

“Cletus will do well to draw his curtains at night,” I thought. “If an enemy — the three-fingered party, for instance — wants to take a shot at him, this would be an admirable point of vantage. I’ll mention it to him.”

I whistled for the valet, drew him to the open window, and dismissed both him and the gardener. Then I returned to Uncle Cato.

“Somebody stood in the bush and spied on Cletus, I have no doubt,” I told him. “Better have your servants circulate around the premises at intervals to-night, beginning now. He might come back — and he might not go away again so quietly. I’ll do a bit of looking myself.”

Cato hastened to the servants’ quarters, and I routed out Jim Steel. He and I, separating, gave the grounds adjacent to the house a thorough combing, but discovered no one. Not even a servant.

“Funny,” I remarked when Jim reported that he had not come in contact with any one except half a dozen guests. “Cato was supposed to scatter his gang in the grounds.”

“Gang is a good word.” Jim commented.

I let that pass. Pessimism is Steel’s curse. Anybody can convince him that it’s going to rain, but he has to see the sun before he’ll believe it is going to shine.

“I’m going to send your friend the reformed crook out scouting,” I told him. “You watch that young fool Patterson, if you can locate him.”

Finding Cato, I instructed him to send for the butler and instruct him to spend the next half hour prowling in the grounds at the front of the house. Cato again hastened off. I waited five minutes, then sneaked up the back stairs, picked the lock on the butler’s door, and let myself in. I wanted to see his shoes.

In a corner of a closet I came upon two pairs. One of house shoes, and the other heavy walking brogues. The brogues had recently been in intimate contact with black loam — such as could be found in the middle of the lilac bush and around its edges. Furthermore, the brogues were big enough to have made the impressions there.